HARD TIMES AND SAFETY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9567, 13 August 1909, Page 4

HARD TIMES AND SAFETY.

The financial depression in Americe had one good result —it reduced the ! numbe*r of railway casualties. The railways in America are notorious for the number of people they kill and maim, both employees and passengers, and.the figures for 1908 show pretty clearly that much of this loss of life and limb could be prevented. There were nearly 1,400 fewer people killed last year than in 1907, at the end of which year the financial crisis occurred. One railroad came through the, year with no accidents to trains, equalling the record of some of the English lines. The official explanation ib that there was less business and consequently employees were not so rushed. The decline in traffic is said to have substituted orderly observance of rules by passengers and employees for their violation in the feverish rush of prosperity that ; culminated in October, 1907." These are the conclusions ot an official investigator, but the "Wall Street Journal]' thinks that the , most important point has not been , made. This is the tyranny of the Unions. During the prosperous ; period offending railway servants , were constantly reinstated on the del mand of their Unions, though they were not fit to have charge of human > life. "There is probably not a i division superintendent in the United , States who could not tell stories of . coercion during that period. If the . railroad is deprived of the power to discharge its men for incompetence, , carelessness, or recklessness, it canI not maintain discipline and there is no great industry in which rapid . discipline is so imperatively needed," But when labour in general, and therefore Union labour in particular, is plentiful in hard times, the . Unions cannot afford to be arrog- , ant, and the railroads can maintain discipline. Men know that [if they , are careless they will be thrown on a . cold market. According to another * paper, haste is at the bottom of the ; terrible loss of life on American railways.